IBAC admits it cannot do its job

Premier Denis Napthine has no choice now but to reframe and reboot the $170 million integrity watchdog that has fallen so short of what the Coalition promised in opposition.

A special report marking the first year of operation for the Baillieu and Napthine governments' Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission has confirmed what eminent legal critics warned of: the commission is toothless.

The report is the first opportunity for Victorians to assess the work of the agency that former Coalition leader Ted Baillieu said we needed to clean up the ''culture of corruption'' in Victoria.

At merely 29 pages in length, and of little substance, the report reads like a satire; like it might have been scripted for the BBC's Yes Minister or The Thick of It series.

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The report reveals that under names such as operations Hydrogen, Toucan, Plyers and Herbert, Victoria's elite corruption fighters spent the year investigating an alleged police assault, alleged back-handers at a rural council, alleged bribes over cemetery plots, police handling of internal bullying, and racist stubby holders at a police social club.

Ten investigations have been completed with charges coming out of just one.

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Some weightier matters have included the review of issues around former deputy police commissioner Sir Ken Jones.

Particularly notable, however, is that the agency's focus has not been the dark corners of government.

As early as March 2012, The Age raised concerns about IBAC's scope. The paper specifically noted that the establishing legislation appeared to be drafted to avoid precisely the kind of matters the Coalition protested about while in opposition: questionable land deals, planning controversies and government insiders doing the wrong thing.

Even expert lawyers who advised the Coalition on IBAC's creation warned it would not work, with eminent QC Douglas Meagher calling for the government to abandon the idea and save taxpayers' money.

Now even IBAC itself acknowledges it is hamstrung and that the legal threshold needed for investigations is ''vague, too high and therefore liable to challenge in the Supreme Court''.

Corruption by public officials, it concedes, may have gone uninvestigated.

''There have been corrupt conduct allegations where IBAC has not felt able to commence investigations because of threshold restrictions in the IBAC Act. Not all of these were suitable for referral elsewhere. This constraint has possibly undermined IBAC's ability to perform and achieve its principal objects and functions.

''As if to reinforce this point, the IBAC report was tabled the same day that the New South Wales equivalent, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, had Premier Barry O'Farrell in the witness stand.

There, Mr O'Farrell categorically denied that he had received a $3000 bottle of wine from the head of a company linked to the Obeid family. Mr O'Farrell also insisted to the NSW commission that he could not recall a 2011 phone call with the man who allegedly sent the lavish gift.

It is hard to imagine such a scene playing out in Victoria given the legislation that limits IBAC.

New South Wales' ICAC is free to investigate just about anything it wants, even follow a hunch or a suspicion. But Victoria's IBAC can only investigate conduct sufficiently serious to constitute an indictable offence.

It must also be satisfied that the facts, if proved beyond reasonable doubt, would constitute serious corrupt conduct.

The Victorian model is further weakened by the fact that politicians are not exposed to the full force of IBAC scrutiny.

In its first report, IBAC has itself made it clear that it is not doing job it wants to. Its public plea for more teeth makes shirking this an urgent issue for both sides of politics, irrespective of which side of the legislative chamber they sit.